FBI Director Kash Patel Reforms: Warnings Are Overblown

Kurt Lewin, the father of modern social psychology, once said, “[i]f you want truly to understand something, try to change it.” He could have been talking about the modern FBI, with the implied resistance coming not necessarily from within, but instead from those who chronicle the bureau’s changes. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has undergone near-constant reforms and mission adjustments over its 117-year history. In the past, these changes drew scant notice. But today, seemingly every operational change makes headlines.

Last week, the New York Times ominously warned that “Trump Aims to Use More F.B.I., Drug and Gun Agents to Pursue Immigrants” and fretted as the “F.B.I. Dismantles Elite Public Corruption Squad.” Legislators expressed similar concerns, hauling FBI director Kash Patel and other intelligence officials to the Hill to explain the bureau’s shifting priorities. Patel argued that these adjustments, which include a newfound focus on international drug-trafficking and the southern border, aligned the bureau’s priorities with those of President Trump.

Also controversial was an eight-page instructive memorandum sent to federal prosecutors earlier this month by the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Matthew R. Galeotti. Titled “Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime,” the memo notes that the department is shifting focus to “high-impact areas” such as corporate violations of immigration law, tariff policy evasion, and cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

But for journalists eager to frame any Trump administration action in the worst possible light, the memo presented an opportunity to distort the FBI’s and DOJ’s intentions, evidenced by a Reuters piece headlined, “FBI ordered to prioritize immigration, as DOJ scales back white collar cases.” While it’s true that increasing immigration enforcement requires shifting resources from other areas, this is hardly unprecedented, nor does it threaten national security. Like all of his predecessors, Patel is adjusting the bureau’s resource allocation to address the most pressing threats facing the United States today.

To understand Patel’s shift, consider how the bureau’s policies and priorities have evolved. The FBI’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, appointed in 1924, quickly moved to coordinate with state law enforcement agencies and target organized crime. He established the world-renowned FBI Laboratory and directed his special agents to collect and catalog latent fingerprints. Whether tracking spies during World War II, hunting Vietnam draft-dodgers, or confronting the Communist threat, Hoover insisted that the bureau remain flexible and adaptable to changing times.

But Hoover stubbornly resisted certain changes. For example, he never took the Mafia threat seriously, and he ordered that FBI agents be male, wear a coat and tie, and never work in an undercover capacity. Decades after Hoover’s death, a former FBI agent, Louis J. Freeh, took the helm as director in 1993. Upon assuming the role, he immediately reassigned hundreds of headquarters personnel to crime-fighting duties in FBI field offices. Yet through these personnel assignment changes, the traditional FBI mission priorities remained counterterrorism, counterintelligence, public corruption, civil rights, white-collar crime, bank robberies, kidnappings, violent crime, transnational organized crime, and—with the emergence of the Internet—cybercrime.

Those priorities held until the al-Qaida terror attacks on September 11, 2001. Less than a year later, then-FBI director Robert S. Mueller III testified before a House of Representatives subcommittee to outline the bureau’s new approach. In the wake of 9/11, Mueller argued, the FBI had to become “more flexible, agile, and mobile in its capacity to respond to the array of difficult and challenging national security and criminal threats facing the United States.”

He proposed a series of structural changes, calling them a “direct response to the tragic events of 9/11,” and submitted them to Congress, noting that they had been “cleared by the Attorney General and the [Bush] Administration.” Among the changes was “a permanent shift of 518 field agents from criminal investigations to augment our counterterrorism investigations.” Mueller plucked the largest share—400 agents—from drug investigations (where I was then assigned), along with 59 from white-collar crime and another 59 from violent crimes. The FBI survived those changes, with other law enforcement stepping in to fill the resulting gaps.

The same thing is happening now. In a Fox News interview, Director Patel announced plans to shutter the FBI’s D.C. headquarters, and—in a move channeling Freeh—returning 1,500 HQ employees back to field offices around the country. Patel’s attention to the border, which is not unprecedented, is a reasonable response to emerging threats such as transnational criminal gangs. Trump’s attorney general and FBI director are, unsurprisingly, following the president’s lead in focusing on illegal immigration.

Richard Gid Powers, in his 1987 biography Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover, described how Hoover made the deployment of the bureau’s resources a symbol of its priorities: “the public had come to expect the dispatch of FBI agents as an indication of the concern of the Federal Government.”

Term limits ensure that Kash Patel will never match Hoover’s 48-year reign. But the new director is drawing on lessons from Hoover, Freeh, and Mueller. In dangerous times, the FBI must adapt. Sending agents to the southern border signals a necessary shift in priorities. Now, we wait for Patel to deliver on his promise to reform.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images